A pretty, well designed website is nice, but it doesn’t drive your sales or make your marketing  successful.  It’s the data and analysis behind the content and design that determines success.  Data first; design second.

See the survey results below from Chief Marketer.  This chart shows metric reporting tools any small business or company can use to measure marketing success.  Some are about how people get to your site and what they do once they arrive there.

For example, “hits” to your website doesn’t tell you much.  But “Page Views” do.  I love tracking Page Views because it tells me how many visitors over a given time-frame actually viewed a page or pages on my site.  It’s the difference between an attention grabbing read versus a click or glance.  A page view means interest.  Do you track your daily page views?  Are you tracking the trends?

Are your website reporting tools enabled, such as Google Analytics or AWStats?  Also make sure your e-mail Service Provider supplies reporting tools such as open and bounce rates.  The reports I get from Constant Contact for each e-mail marketing newsletter sent is a goldmine.   This way you see the trends and can act on them.  You see what works.  You can then change what does not work.

So make sure you have the means to measure your marketing  performance as it relates to your website and social media campaigns.  Remember, marketing without measurement is flying blind.  It’s important to know where you’re going.  And, if you don’t get there-you will know why.  Double click the graph below for a larger view:

Now, track those trends…

Your thoughts or questions?